No Artificial Ingredients

Regardless of what a food package says, I always look at the nutrition label and the list of ingredients. I got into this habit trying to avoid products with hydrogenated fats. It is necessary to read the labels to avoid foods with hydrogenated fats and saturated fats that increase cholesterol levels.

In 2006, the FDA required listing the trans fats from hydrogenated oils in nutrition labels because of health concerns. Manufacturers reacted by reducing the trans fats to less than 0.5 grams per serving so that the numbers could be rounded to zero, or by replacing the hydrogenated fats with saturated fats that don't turn rancid, such as palm kernel oil or coconut oil. In some cases, the manufacturers just reduced the serving size without changing the composition of the product to mathematically reduce the amount of trans fat per serving and round to zero.

The problem is that even some "healthy" products can have misleading labels. The Dannon yogurt illustrated here claims to be "All Natural" but contains "high fructose corn syrup".

There are no natural sources of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). This syrup is made from corn starch by a complex chemical process. Also, the words "No Artificial Anything" are just a trademark and not a nutritional statement. The trademark is quite misleading because the words imply that a product bearing the trademark is 100% natural.